How to Improve Test Score?

C

CFAfatso

New member
Joined
Jun 18, 2026
Messages
0
Reaction score
0
Anyone NOT scoring passing marks on the practice exams (people on other threads are scoring in the 90s - wtf?!)? If so, how do you plan to improve your scores? I’m starting to panic as I’ve covered the material/practice questions using various mediums and I review every question/answer after completing a mock, yet even after 3 mocks, still in the 50s-60s range. I’ve spent way too much time on this to not see any results….depressed and pretty frustrated - help?
 
Well I wouldn’t let that get to you because people score 80+ and end up failing and lot of people scoring that high now are retaking it for the 2nd or 3rd time.
And there are people who score around 60% on the mocks and end up passing.
No point worrying. the test might end up being questions you happen to know well and others have no clue on. or it’s like in the movie old school where you are like will farrell and you blackout during an economic debate and crushed it when you come to.
 
CFAfatso wrote:
Anyone NOT scoring passing marks on the practice exams (people on other threads are scoring in the 90s - wtf?!)? If so, how do you plan to improve your scores? I’m starting to panic as I’ve covered the material/practice questions using various mediums and I review every question/answer after completing a mock, yet even after 3 mocks, still in the 50s-60s range. I’ve spent way too much time on this to not see any results….depressed and pretty frustrated - help?
Click to expand...
I’m in the exact same boat man.. We can’t let it get to us, it’s not the end of the world and our depression can only hurt D-day’s performance. It’s the final stretch.. aim for best understanding in the high scoring areas but keep the “lesser” concepts fresh through quick reviews.
 
Agreed that it’s just a practice exam and things can and hopefully will be better come June 1st, but I mean to go from 1st mock of 67 to like a 50 on Mock 3, when all along you’re revising, doing practice questions, etc, it’s a pretty big blow - hard to continue pushing and not sure WHAT to do/change? If I revise my notes/condensed summaries, it’s the “well they can ask that in 1000 ways so gotta practice” but obviously I don’t know the material well enough so practice leads to poor scores….and feel like I’m running out of time. Just not what I wanted to see less than 3 weeks out….
 
Stop looking at what people in the other threads are scoring - For one, you don’t know that they are being completely honest with their test scores, you should take some of those things with fair skepticism.
 
In my opinion practise is good, but spending time to understand the material is much better. If you find that there is a reading you can’t explain to someone else, then it may be a sign that you haven’t understood that specific reading properly — focus on trying to single out such readings.
Also, the material is very bulky and reading items in isolation may be very unhelpful. I overcame this challenge by building diagrams and charts of how each item relates to one another - and this has helped me tremendously on topics like MBS and ABS.
I would also recommend reading the CFAI summaries. Your notes are probably great, but those summaries contain information that are oftentimes brief and clearly expressed. Manytimes, item set questions can be answered by using these summaries alone. These helped me a lot for level 1 and has helped me a lot since i started studying for L2. For level 1, i actually tore out all the summay pages and stapled them together as my quick fact sheet.
 
Just use these mocks a as a way to really stress the subjects. Like others have said, don’t take the score so seriously. If you get 50 of them wrong, and are able to figure out what you did, thats 50 more concepts that you have teased out as weak points before the exam. When you wake up on June 2, you just have to know you put everything into it. And if it trips you up this year, do it again next year. Thats how I’m approaching it.
just keep crushing the tough topics, focus on the details in the CFAI BB and EOC if you feel you have the concept down.
 
I would like to quote something I found on another thread - just for psychological reasons really - because I’m panicking really hard today and I need it
padniaki wrote:
Whatever you do, DO NOT GIVE UP. I took my first mock (big mistake waiting that long) the Monday before the exam and I bombed it….I mean, 40%. Those last four days between that mock and the exam were the difference between passing and failing because I refused to give up.
Remember Al Pacino’s motivational speech from The Longest Yard? All that stuff aout how winning and losing is a difference of inches, and you have to fight for every inch? That’s what L2 is. FIGHT FOR EVERY INCH.
Click to expand...
It has also been implied that the MPS for L2 is lower than we might expect…
Relax and do the best we can. I find bloodline’s advice on CFAi summaries pretty smart actually so I’m implementing that as well.
 
It seems like you’re not grasping the subjects as well as you think. I’d go back to the source and nail those things down. If Corporate Finance is your weak topic, go through and due all practice problems in the CFAI book. Then you’ll be an expert and shouldn’t miss in that section if you truly understand everything.
 
panos.kollias wrote:
I would like to quote something I found on another thread - just for psychological reasons really - because I’m panicking really hard today and I need it
padniaki wrote:
Whatever you do, DO NOT GIVE UP. I took my first mock (big mistake waiting that long) the Monday before the exam and I bombed it….I mean, 40%. Those last four days between that mock and the exam were the difference between passing and failing because I refused to give up.
Remember Al Pacino’s motivational speech from The Longest Yard? All that stuff aout how winning and losing is a difference of inches, and you have to fight for every inch? That’s what L2 is. FIGHT FOR EVERY INCH.
Click to expand...
It has also been implied that the MPS for L2 is lower than we might expect…
Relax and do the best we can. I find bloodline’s advice on CFAi summaries pretty smart actually so I’m implementing that as well.
Click to expand...
Haha, whoever wrote that is a dope. The Al Pacino quote he was referencing is from Any Given Sunday, not The Longest Yard. What a NERD.
 
I’m not a big notes guy, but I used to keep a notebook toward the end of studying to keep track of anything I didn’t fully understand. For example, if I did a pensions problem and got it wrong, I brushed up on the concept and put the salient points in the notebook. I’d read through the notebook from time to time, figuring this was the content I hadn’t mastered and really needed to get down.
 
Focus less on the tests and more on the concepts. Your mock scores puts you in range of a pass, spend the next 15 days going through entire sections that you struggled with individual parts of. Use the CFAI material. You just need to get a few more questions than youre getting right now.
 
Think about it this way: you won’t make the same mistake on each of the questions that you came across. It’s likely that some of them are on the test. Who knows, you may even have a better score on June 1st then! I am serious; I don’t score very well either, but still feel that I’m improving everytime I’m practicing. We are very likely to get improved results on the last few mocks we’ll be doing the last week prior to the exam.
 
Don’t worry about mastery of small subject areas. Just constantly drill down FRA and Equity as it is likely to range from 40-50% and if you can manage a 75%+ on these areas you will be in good shape to pass the exam. Did the Schweser 3 day review and the instructor had good advice in terms of building a “string portfolio” of a few strong subject areas to master. If you master FRA, Equity and 2 other ones like say corp. finance and ethics you will be in really good shape even if you are close to straight up guessing on the other item sets. Biggest problem he mentioned was that people review to get a baseline in everything than get crushed on the difficult questions in item sets and have to get close to all the easy ones right in order to pass. Study in accordance with exam weights and I’m sure that should help. Also I got crushed by Schweser morning sessions practice Exams book 2 exam 1 and it lit a fire under my ass so sometimes failure is a good thing.
 
I scored 64% in cfa 2012 mock. Got hammered in fra/equity
Then solved 50 caselets on each and bought elan videos for pension/intercorporate
Now in CFA 2009/2010 mock got 70% with good improvement in FRA/EQUITY
now i am reading heavyweights form CFA book. Will do FI by tommrow afternoon
Then Corp finance,derivatives,ethics,equity,fra
Wanna increase score sin biggies
 
vicky_cool400 wrote:
I scored 64% in cfa 2012 mock. Got hammered in fra/equity
Then solved 50 caselets on each and bought elan videos for pension/intercorporate
Click to expand...
what are these caselets you are talking about? I want to get more practice in for FRA and Equity
 
Thanks everyone - I truly appreciate it.
I wasn’t trying to compare myself to others, just feel lost as to how to improve - but yes, just gotta work harder…good luck and really pray that I don’t see anyone of yall until the L3 forum next year! AMEN.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top